1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a reference block for use in a method of manufacturing a head suspension having a load beam and a flexure aligned with the load beam and a reference pin block used for the method. The head suspension is a device that is installed in a hard disk drive of an information-processing device such as a computer.
2. Description of Related Art
A head suspension includes a load beam and a flexure attached to a rigid part of the load beam. The flexure and rigid part are provided with reference holes into which reference pins of a jig are inserted to position the flexure and rigid part with respect to each other. In the positioned state, the flexure and rigid part are joined together by, for example, laser welding so that the flexure is kept fixed and aligned to the load beam,
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-163904 discloses a technique of forming a reference hole in a flexure and a burring hole in a load beam. Along an inner circumferential edge of the burring hole, a flange is formed . The flexure is laid on the load beam and the flange of the load beam is fitted into the reference hole of the flexure, to position the load beam and flexure relative to each other.
This related art carries out zero-clearance positioning to correctly align the load beam and flexure to each other.
Another related art disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-133803 forms two reference holes in a load beam and a frame which is outside the load beam, to secure a relatively long distance between the reference holes.
The related arts mentioned above, however, have a limitation in the alignment correctness. In particular, the related arts are improper to carry out high-precision positioning on recent head suspensions that employ very-thin flexures because such very-thin flexures are very low in rigidity.